Ex-Texas Governor Calls Chenoweth Ideas ‘Radical’

Congress is “controlled by a group that you expect to break out in a food fight every day,” former Texas Gov. Ann Richards said Friday, and she thinks Americans are ready to return Democrats to power.

Richards, who made a national splash with her 1988 Democratic convention speech that said George Bush was “born with a silver foot in his mouth,” stopped in Boise to speak at a fundraiser for Democratic congressional candidate Dan Williams.

In a press conference before the event, she said, “I came to try to help Dan Williams bring a little sanity back to congressional representation from the 1st District in Idaho.”

She dubbed incumbent Rep. Helen Chenoweth’s ideas “radical” and “looney tunes.”

“Consistently, the votes have been against families, have been against children, have been against women, have been against old people,” Richards said. “Things have indeed gone too far to the right.”

Tim Walsh, a Chenoweth campaign worker who attended the press conference to rebut Richards’ remarks, noted afterward that Chenoweth won election handily in 1994, while Richards lost her re-election bid.

Walsh said a group of gun-rights protesters who carried signs outside the fund-raiser were “totally separate” from the Chenoweth campaign, although the group notified the campaign of its plans.

The signs had handwritten slogans like, “Ann and Dan agree, take their guns, give them taxes” and “Hey Ann, where’s the silver spoon now, ex-governor.”

Voters didn’t know what they were getting with Chenoweth and other Republicans, Richards said.

“I think the American people were stunned to find out what the contract on America really meant … The people of America looked up and said, my gosh, I didn’t mean for you to put old people out of nursing homes, I didn’t mean you to cut their health care, I didn’t mean you to keep kids from getting college educations by cutting back on grants and scholarships, I didn’t mean for you to keep kids from being able to have Head Start … for God’s sake, I had no idea that’s what you were going to do.”

Walsh said Chenoweth voted to save Medicare, not cut it.

Richards said that although President Clinton’s polling numbers are good, she expects Republicans to “resurrect Dole” through public relations and make it a tough race. But the Republicans’ record for the past two years will work against them, she said. “I’m in Washington a lot now, and I go over there to Congress, and you all really wouldn’t believe it,” she said.

“I mean, every day it’s just like Saturday Night Live … It is just one big hoo-hah.”

“I’m gonna give you an example of the kind of logic you hear today on the floor. They tell us that this country went to hell because poor women stayed home with their kids and didn’t go to work. And then they tell middle-class women that the country went to hell because they went to work and didn’t stay home with their kids. It is one of these Catch-22’s that no matter what you do, it’s the women’s fault.”

“I would suggest to you that there are more complex problems here.”

, DataTimes